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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509222">Three Turns, Two Kisses, One Outcome</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen'>alephthirteen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne &amp; Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>And She Inherited Bellatrix's Tendency to Cream Her Panties Around Powerful Witches, BAMF Hermione Granger, Because This Muggleborn was Really Putting up a Fight, Delphini in "Cursed Child" has daddy issues, F/F, Going back in time from an apocalyptic future to get a smooch, Slytherin Hermione Granger, So AU it hurts, Terminator-inspired plotline, This one has mommy issues, Voldemort's Daughter Defected Due to Gay Panic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:36:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,297</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509222</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter disappeared the night Sirius Black escaped.  Tom Riddle wins the war and rules Britain with an iron fist.  His daughter is trained to lead his armies.  Then a muggleborn witch, cleverer than all except the Riddles themselves, appears long after she was thought dead.  Gathers a resistance of her classmates, muggle armies, terrorists, anyone who wants to go down fighting.  Armies are conscripted, nuclear bombs dropped, volunteer armies make suicide-mission attacks on Voldemort's strongholds.  </p><p>The Mongoose leads them. A small, brown-haired predator.  A killer of snakes.</p><p>Bellatrix and her daughter take note. Bella wants a pet.  Wants to make the girl her plaything.  Show her her place with a collar and a leash. Delphini wants her too, but she isn't so sure. No one else has looked at her unafraid, wand to wand in the middle of a duel.</p><p>OR</p><p>What if Hermione led the muggleborn/muggle resistance? What if Delphini spent a half-century tracking her down? What if she was closer to her mother than her father? What if she was more into sex and violence than world domination?</p><p>OR </p><p>What if the only way Delphini can know what it's like to kiss a girl is to save the world from her family?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Delphini Riddle/Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy/Delphini Riddle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. All the Cute Girls Died in the Darkest Timeline</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Where the last of the Riddle Family goes to extreme lengths to get a girl to like her...</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>(Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Dumbledore had turned on his heel and looked back as he reached the door.</em>
</p><p>“<em>I am going to lock you in. It is—” he consulted his watch, “five minutes to midnight. Miss Granger, three turns should do it. Good luck.”</em></p><p>“<em>Good luck?” Harry repeated as the door closed behind Dumbledore. “Three turns? What’s he talking about? What are we supposed to do?”</em></p><p>
  <em>But Hermione was fumbling with the neck of her robes, pulling from beneath them a very long, very fine gold chain.</em>
</p><p>“<em>Harry, come here,” she said urgently. “Quick!”</em></p><p>
  <em>Harry moved toward her, completely bewildered. She was holding the chain out. He saw a tiny, sparkling hourglass hanging from it.</em>
</p><p>“<em>Here—” She had thrown the chain around his neck too.</em></p><p>“<em>Ready?” she said breathlessly.</em></p><p>“<em>What are we doing?” Harry said, completely lost.</em></p><p>
  <em>Hermione turned the hourglass over three times.</em>
</p><hr/><p>"Oh, no."</p><p>The broken chain of the time-turner whips around and slices Hermione's cheek open. Beside her are a pile of bones. The skeleton of a grown man, if she had to guess. Narrow hips, long legs and arms. The skull is facing her, like he turned over with his last breath.</p><p>On the forehead, a lighting bolt shape etched in the bone.</p><p>"Oh, Harry…"</p><p>"He did not die. He did, but not like you think."</p><p>Hermione whips her head around. In the moonlight is a naked girl. Her age, perhaps a year older. Taller, though. With wild black curls whipping in the icy wind, so long that it dances around her calves.</p><p>"He came back. Saved your friend Sirius and that...creature."</p><p>"Buckbeak," Hermione corrects her.</p><p>"I did not like its smell. The scarred boy did, so I aided him."</p><p>"How did Harry die, then?"</p><p>The girl rolls her shoulders, cocking her head.</p><p>"He died. Men do that."</p><p>"Well, what <em>caused </em>his death?"</p><p>She's lovely, this girl. Hermione's uncomfortable, pillow-biting wanks where Dean Thomas's haphazard towel-tying blurred into Parvati's smile and <em>then </em>she came...those had made her wonder. She doesn't wonder anymore. Not staring at this wild girl with skin pale as milk and hair dark as ink. Like a photo in an art museum, of some perfectly beautiful model showing off in a forest.</p><p>The stranger isn't shivering even as Hermione is so cold she's eyeing the threadbare windbreaker on Harry's corpse wondering if it is too disrespectful to borrow it.</p><p>Morgana's gash, she's beautiful. But she's so fucking <em>weird</em>.</p><p>"Time," the stranger replies. "It kills all, in various ways. Sometimes they get gray, like he did. Sometimes a man throws a knife and passing time carries it across the room. I do not think I want that," she adds quietly, looking down. "I cannot allow that. Yes, no dying for me. No dying for <em>you.</em>"</p><p>"So…how did time kill Harry?"</p><p>The girl's lips—a shiny, bloody red—slant into a frown.</p><p>"You came back, but you were stuck. Time would not let you go. It kept you, protected you. He escaped by breaking the chain. He left to save your friend as a boy, saved the creature as a man, returned to your side when he was old and breaking. Laid down. Looked at you. Sighed. I wasn't sure if he was going to sigh a second time, but he did not."</p><p>"How are you not <em>cold?</em>" Hermione whines.</p><p>"I choose not to be," the stranger replies. "I could not choose much as a girl. Like your friend, I was controlled for the purposes of others. So I choose when I can. I was born to a grow powerful, rise to rule my father's side and ensure his rule was eternal."</p><p>"Did you?"</p><p>A tear rolls down, freezing on her skin.</p><p>"Nearly. At the apex of my father's power, he gathered all those like you—those whose magic has no ancestor, no parent but them—into a church. Mother called them mudbloods. I think you are line-makers, because each of you could found an entirely new family of witches and wizards. One last slaughter, take all of their magic for his own. Subsist through eternity. No one resisted, of course. No one could. Our rule was absolute. My mother complained—there was a girl she had been using. We had been using."</p><p>"Using?" Hermione asks, before she realizes how stupidly obvious it is.</p><p>"She was powerful. A brutal witch. Led those who fought back. Killed many of my father's best men. Wounded my mother, which of course, only made mother lust for her more. She was not much older than you. Her hair…"</p><p>There's a soft <em>pop! </em>and the girl is behind Hermione, her hands on her shoulders. Lifting her hair to her face.</p><p>"Smelled of strawberries and a sour fruit. I think the fruit came from Australia, but I don't know. Mother sank it before I learned to read. Didn't like kangaroos, she said."</p><p>"My greatest enemy, my favorite playmate in my chambers...both you. The woman what you become, Hermione. You rallied muggle armies to your side. You made them turn their planes, and missiles and bombs on us. Poisoned every crumb of soil in England. Took almost fifty years to stop your resistance. Barely enough muggles left then for labor camps and trying to breed more servant wizards."</p><p>She grins. More fang than Hermione would like.</p><p>"When you fought, you moved like a dancer, weaved hurricanes and storms with your wand and infernos with your fingers. It was like being struck by the hand of a goddess of war."</p><p>The girl's eyes flash blue, like a neon light and she licks her lips.</p><p>"I liked your power. Craved it. Wanted it inside me. In my body," she explains, cupping her bare sex. "I wanted your magic inside me. It would feel good, I think. Hot. Like my blood was burning. Or singing. Both, maybe. I thought it would sound like a convent on fire with the nuns still at choir practice. I did that once, but it didn't sound the same."</p><p>"But how could she be me? I'm here."</p><p>"You are here now. But you will wake. You will realize fifty years have gone by while the time sands discharged and look around and see your home aflame. Hear the dying screams of the children who wanted to learn magic other than my father's."</p><p>"You will stagger out of the forest, and those who yet live to fight my father will flock to you. The Flaming Fox and The Red Giant. The Quiet Man. The Stranger. They will be starving, and injured, and broken. But with their lost comrade returned? They will fight to the death, each of them. Like each one was an army of giants. The Red Giant's heart gave out protecting the Flaming Fox from a dragon. He grabbed it by the neck with chains and turned its fire on my father's men."</p><p>"Killed almost all."</p><p>Hermione gulps. Two ginger references. Ron, and Ginny.</p><p>"The Quiet Man made the forest come alive. The trees turned to steel and walked. They beat down my father's stronghold until it was rubble, then gravel, then sand. Flaming Fox, my mother and I dueled together. Father did not like to duel women. She broke mother's back so badly I needed father's help and the parts from six muggles to repair it."</p><p>"The Stranger broke our soldiers' minds with a riddle broadcast over wizard wireless. I liked the Stranger," the girl admits. "She was odd, like me. Before that night, I let her escape six times, because she said odd things and I was charmed. When we captured her the last time, I showed her a nargle. She was happy. Said she was ready to die. I used an ice spell, rather than the one my father taught me when I was four. You are cold for a little while, then fall asleep."</p><p><em>"Avada Kedavra,</em>" Hermione mumbles. "You learned Avada Kedavra when you were four? Oh, Merlin and Morgana...you're Voldemort's daughter."</p><p>"I am not yet, but I will be. When I am born. When I am born, mother will want to name me Pleiadea, after the stars. Like her sisters were named. She misses them, even though she killed both. At least in her head, she missed them. I could hear her thoughts as soon as I opened my eyes. Mother's thoughts were loud, jangled. And I was a baby, so I didn't know what words meant. Her mind sounded like knives being smacked together. But when we looked into each other's eyes, she was happy. She let father name me Delphini though."</p><p>"You're not born yet?"</p><p>"Time."</p><p>"Right. Time," Hermione huffs.</p><p>"I like your laugh."</p><p>
  <em>Bloody hell. Voldemort's daughter fancies me.</em>
</p><p>"I will be born, when you are older than I am now. Without your friend, the government cannot stop us. Our victory is easy. The old man will take my father's hand off, and shatter his magic into small pieces but my father will grow a new one and a few of the pieces stayed in him."</p><p>"I mastered time when I was eleven. I wanted a pet, like mum had. Mum's pets made her scream. But a good screaming, I think. She would smile after, and they would lick her breasts and make soft noises as she petted their hair. Father said that I was not there to be a wife and mother. Only a soldier. He killed one pet, the male. Made me kill the other. The female. She had brown hair, like you."</p><p>"So I went upstairs to where we kept my toys and I took at time-dancer like the one you're wearing and learned how to use it. I went back and put my pets out of his reach. Far, far back, before men and women learned magic. Where they would be the only ones. I stayed with them. Watched magic grow. Studied under the masters, one after another. I wanted to kill my father, when he was a baby, before he hurt anybody. I didn't think it would be safe. Then I might have not existed. Not been able to stop him."</p><p>"It's called a Time-Turner, actually."</p><p>"It's a dance if you do more than turn around," the girl says with a smirk.</p><p>"You came to rescue the Stranger, not realizing I had already killed her. Flew into a rage, cut mother's body open," she explains, drawing a finger across her bare belly.</p><p>"Mother moaned from it. Mother was...no, mother <em>is...</em>strange. She likes for her pets to bite her, or scratch her back with their nails. I think she wanted you to take her, after that. You took the Stranger's body and left. It was many years before we captured you. When the time came, father asked me to sacrifice you, in front of mother, so she would realize his power."</p><p>Hermione has forgotten about the cold. Her body is more worried about other things.</p><p>"So you killed me."</p><p>She shakes her head. Laughs, softly.</p><p>"No, I killed <em>father</em>. Broke the parts of him he hid away. Made him mortal. Ripped his head off with claws I had learned to grow from a vampire who tutored me. Mother wailed," she says with a frown. "I enjoyed killing father, but I didn't like her crying."</p><p>"I think mother suffering made me...feel things? Is that what they call it?"</p><p>"I broke the church apart around the line-makers, left them to escape. Waded through my father's army. They were almost endless, but they were raw. Born from fine women. Purebloods, but turned into breeding creatures and seeded by bent old men. Bodies and magic strong, but their minds broken. Not like my mother's mind, broken by beatings. Born broken."</p><p>"It was a cold night, but their blood was hot. I kept enough of it splashed on my skin that I stayed warm. I have some blood, if you're cold. Inside my body. It's all right. I can make more."</p><p>"Let's put a pin in that," Hermione suggests.</p><p>Out of nowhere, a glowing needle forms, stabbing the girl under her left breast.</p><p>"Not <em>literally</em>…" Hermione groans.</p><p>"Besides coming here to tell me we lose, why did you come?"</p><p>"Because, Hermione Granger. no one else scared father. No one else made mother angry when she tortured rather than happy. And I cannot let my father hurt you."</p><p>"And Harry?"</p><p>"I will help you put him where he was when you left."</p><p>She waves her hand.</p><p>"There's no reason for you use the time-dancer now. What happened that night will not happen now."</p><p>She just waves her hand and something that happened decades ago, or decades from now didn't happen. This is worse than when Parvati came back with a perfect arithmancy test, including the ones Hermione got wrong. That time, Hermione kissed her friend without thinking and almost had her pants off before she saw the fear on Parvati's face.</p><p>"Can I kiss you?" stranger—Delphini Riddle, she reminds herself—asks, eyes on the ground.</p><p>It's a shit plan.</p><p>No, it's beyond shit. Her grandfather would have some really colorful things to say about Hermione if she went along.</p><p>"We never kissed, when mother and I used you. I wanted to. I think...I think it's not <em>using </em>if I ask you and you say yes. If we ask and kiss, it's something else. Our soldiers whispered about it. Mother too. But father made the word unspeakable. It would stick in our throats. Something I want to know more about."</p><p>She's not really doing this, Hermione tells herself. She's gone mad. Or she's dead, and she's in hell. Except there's a crazy beautiful woman--Morgana's ass, Hermione is gay--and she told Hermione a story about forbidden love, and how Delphini stopped the end of the world because she had a crush on Hermione even though she was raised to be a monster.</p><p>Voldemort's estranged daughter is naked and <em>fuck, holy fuck </em>she is hot. Wearing moonlight and her own hair and looking like every witch-hunter's nightmare about a beautiful sorceress in the forest tempting virgins.</p><p>This monster is pleading for affection. She isn't sure, but she thinks she's in love with Hermione. Gryffindors are supposed to be courageous. To hold their ground. To hold to their principles. Hermione's having a hard time recalling why exactly she should.</p><p>Hermione's mouth is dry, but this strange, evil girl has lips that look moist. Tasty. She's thirteen, she's never been kissed and she <em>wants to be, </em>especially if she's going to die fighting without having a chance to. If this kiss is like Harry's mum protecting him, maybe love can keep Delphini from doing all those things in this timeline.</p><p>"Can I kiss you, Hermione? I need to ask, so that it is the other thing. The good thing?"</p><p>"Yes. Because you asked."</p><p>Delphine surges forwards, fast as a snake. Her hands go to Hermione's cheeks. She leans down and rips the Time-Turner off Hermione's neck with her teeth. Taking one hand off Hermione's face, she pulls out the needle that was keeping her heart plugged. She cracks the glass and holds the sand in her hands as life gushes out of her and stains it pink.</p><p>She smears the sand on her lips, then Hermione's, then paints a nasty, complicated rune on her cheek where it sizzles and smells like acid but doesn't actually hurt.</p><p>Delphini paints the same rune on her own. Her tongue flicks out, smooth and black and wet. Thankfully, not actually forked.</p><p>"No tongue," Hermione pleads.</p><p><em>My first kiss… </em>is all Hermione has time to think.</p><p>-----</p><p>Hermione snaps to with a gasp. A long, slender hand lands on her thigh and squeezes three times.</p><p>"Shh," Delphini tells her. "Safe. You're safe."</p><p>She's in a train compartment. Old-fashioned one, too. She would say it's the Express, except no one is in robes and there's no lady selling candy.</p><p>Delphini draws a wand out of mid-air. A ruler straight rod of painted steel, decorated with a spiral of rose-thorns. A knob that could crack a man's skull and a pinhole in the back where a tiny vortex of what looks like pink flame pulls air in with a quiet whistle. A crackling, sparking storm of the same flames sizzles at the tip, spiraling like a whirlpool. Or a galaxy.</p><p>"Okay," Hermione mumbles. "Metal wand, new. Summoning magical objects from...where, exactly?"</p><p>Delphini smiles and taps her chest over her heart.</p><p>"It's my first wand. Like all wizards in my family, I forged my own. You destroyed it in a duel. I was so impressed that I stunned you wandlessly and kissed you before I escaped. Now that I've kissed you again, I can retrieve the wand from the memory of it. Hands, please."</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"Open your hands, please. And close your eyes," she adds, her breath tickling across Hermione's ear.</p><p>She does, and Hermione feels the wand laid across her palms and her fingers gently curled shut around it. She feels threads of something slither out of the wand. A momentary pinch—like a doctor's syringe—and the threads enter her skin, pouring an icy coolness into her veins.</p><p>The gurgling unease that had been flip-flopping her guts since she awoke in the woods is blunted.</p><p>"Better?" Delphini asks.</p><p>Hermione nods.</p><p>"In the war, to take a wand after a duel was to erase the victim. Everything they ever did, everything they stood for. To <em>give a wand,</em>" she chuckles. "Was a promise. An unbreakable vow, without words."</p><p>"What are you vowing?"</p><p>"That I am yours, Hermione. That the instant I am born in this timeline, I am yours. I will be an infant but..."</p><p>She chuckles.</p><p>"Bodies grow and I have my ways."</p><p>"Time," Hermione teases. "Like everything else with you."</p><p>"Time and self are linked. It's difficult to inject myself in a point in time where I do not exist, but if it is a time and reality in which I exist, I can choose how I do so. I will flee to your side. Take me into your life, when I do. Please. I swear that I will betray my father again and again, burn the world, ruin muggle and wizard alike if it is what you need from me."</p><p>Hermione laughs.</p><p>"You're a bit intense, you know that?"</p><p>Delphini laughs.</p><p>"You make me that way. I was renowned for my heartlessness and my stoicism. I once let a muggle spit on my face because I had not come to kill <em>him</em>. The assassins accompanying me were appalled."</p><p>"What train is this?" Hermione asks.</p><p>"A touring train run by Virgin Railways," Delphi explains. "Moves slowly, through the pretty places. Though I hope 'virgin' does not mean they forbid certain activities on it because I want to take it with you."</p><p>Hermione laughs.</p><p>"You're terrible."</p><p>"Oh, darling…"</p><p>Eerily sharp teeth catch her earlobe and pull.</p><p>"...until I've got my head under your skirt, you have no idea."</p><p>"Go," Delphini sniffs. "Learn. Wait for me. Be happy. If that means smoking baffleweed, do that. If it means quidditch, do that. If you have to take a bed-warmer, or ten, or fifty, do that. But I want the next time I see you to be with a <em>smile, </em>Hermione Granger. You are the serpent wrapped around my heart."</p><p>A pair of lips are pressed to her forehead, hot and slick. Then merely warm. Then icy. Then gone.</p><p>The muffled thud of something hitting the carpet makes her curious enough to open her eyes.  Delphini is gone. Maybe the universe had enough and told her to go back to a point where she actually existed.</p><p>"Slytherin's locket?" she asks no one in particular. It's smeared with blood and there's holes in a pentagram pattern, piercing it through and letting out a red glow. She takes it in her hand, bracing for the whispering ghosts and the icy hatred of the horcrux.</p><p>Instead, the faintest sound of a woman humming.</p><p>"Course it's not a horcrux," she mutters to herself. "She fixed it."</p><p>She opens the locket and sees a picture of Delphini on her wedding day. Black leather dress. Red stain on her lips like she was a vampire. Maybe she is. Who knows? She implied she spent centuries in the past gathering power. If that's the case, she stayed young somehow.</p><p>The picture reaches into her corset and pulls out a roll of parchment, passing it forward towards the camera. The tip of the paper pokes into her world and Hermione pulls it out.</p><p>
  <b>'Get off at Banff. There will be a souvenir stand that sells rubber ducks in kilts. Buy one with a red kilt. A man with a Red Volvo will take you. PS-If the pink toad tries to cut you this time, like she did before, I will visit upon her pain that no mortal has ever suffered. Make sure she knows that...'</b>
</p><p>Hermione scrubs the blood off on her sleeve and hangs it around her neck.</p><p>----</p><p>As farmyards and villages give way to rocky hills and sprawling lochs, Hermione starts remembering things. Things that feel wrong, at first, then make so much more sense. Her old memories become like movies, or favorite books in her head. She remembers how they went and they make her smile, but she knows they're not real.</p><p>Her parents received a letter when she was nine, telling her that she was a witch and that someone would reach out to them to help her.</p><p>Narcissa Malfoy took her in, promising her parents to get her up to speed. Every July, she goes to Malfoy Manor. She goes back to her parents' at Christmas. It seems like the band never really broke up, at least inside the Malfoy home. Lucius doesn't show his mark but some others do, when they're playing wizard's cards. Which if she remembers, is just  even-more-deceptive poker.</p><p>They know she's muggleborn, but someone Lucius calls 'the guide' sent a letter saying that she was essential to the future of the Dark. A murder of crows came the first night she arrived, delivering a signet ring and talismans carved of basilisk fangs and wyvern bone. There was a ceremony in the basement, with several Death Eaters who put an invisible mark on her. Not a Dark Mark. Something else.</p><p>She was sorted into Slytherin, because the hat stalled, so she asked it. Her friends were there, and she was hungry and just wanted to sit down at a table with her friends. Just like Harry asked for Gryffindor. Snape is no less nasty, but some sort of privilege protects her. The same one that makes the girls in her dorm look up and smile, or stop talking when she enters. She leans towards the memory of why she's special to Slytherins but it leans back, teasing her. Not yet, the memory wants to say.</p><p>Draco has had a crush on her since crushes meant pulling her hair and throwing frogs at her. Pansy hates her for it. Astoria complains that she has to fight for his attention but she remembers hearing her talking to Tracey Davis once, about how much fun it was to have to play the game with<em> Hermione Granger</em> and how if she has to lose, at least it's to her. Always competitive in any universe.</p><p>Harry still pisses Draco off, and Draco complains to her about it after.</p><p>She's friends with Harry, because they sit together in Potions. He moved next to her the first time Snape mocked him, partnering with her. If he's inside the bubble of whatever about her it is that Snape won't mess with, the worst Harry gets is a too-harsh grade about his leech flattening skills.</p><p>She's friends with Ginny too, though not as closely. She came to her as a first year to ask about hair and beauty potions. Not Ron, naturally. Ginny told her Ron thinks all Slytherins are evil, and Hermione laughed and kept braiding her hair. Ginny gushes about Harry and Hermione tries to hide her crush.</p><p>She can feel the crush on Harry trying to tear off, to go be one of the Other-Hermione memories, but it doesn't quite manage it.</p><p>-----</p><p>Banff is a lovely town, she decides. Smells like the ocean, and peat from the moors upwind.</p><p>There's a dusting of snow on the ground, and people are taking down New Year's decorations. There's an old man with a white mohawk, a pink mustache, and a stained glass eye patch over what looks like a good eye. He's wearing a purple and pink tie-dyed trench coat selling rubber ducks with kilts just past the depots front fence. He's running a souvenir stand with a bunch of blinking white lights around his neck and an instrumental version of Bohemian Rhapsody blasting out. He's basically<em> daring</em> people on vacation not to buy something and take a picture, much to the annoyance of the police on the other side of the 'no soliciting' sign who would be in the background of the shot.</p><p>There's one duck left with a red kilt.</p><p>"I'll take that one," she tells him, holding out a five-pound note. She just figured that was what the crinkle in her back pocket was about. Thankfully, she was right.</p><p>"S'no good," he huffs. "Not fer th' likes of ye."</p><p>
  <em>What are you, a pirate Delphi yanked out of the past and plunked here to bother me?</em>
</p><p>A woman with her little boy come up and he takes her muggle money, but he also nudges the red-kilted duck out of sight. Hermione fishes in the money pouch tied around her wrist—a memory comes to her of how Tracey showed her how to do the expansion and weightlessness charm—and gets two galleons out.</p><p>"Sickles," he huffs. "Four o' 'em."</p><p>She hands them over.</p><p>"Pleasure doing business, miss."  He dropped the accent like taking off a hat.  All an act, she supposes.</p><p>He pulls aside his coat and inside it, she sees a Slytherin crest on his sweater with a smiley face button pinned under it.</p><p>"Always nice to see new blood at Hogwarts."</p><p>She feels like an idiot, holding a rubber duck with a red kilt on high over her head. Then again, she is a witch, and when she thinks about playing a harmonica for a three-headed dog, or using a drugged rat to put a basilisk to sleep—apparently, <em>she </em>saved Ginny—this doesn't feel so weird.</p><p>A cherry-red Volvo station wagon appears before her with a huge bang and a trail of flaming tire tracks. Harry's inside. Behind the wheel is a scruffy fellow in a ridiculous straw hat, giant sunglasses as about nine baggy shirts.</p><p>"Hey there," Harry says, tapping his wand to the window of the rear door. "Hop in."</p><p>"We heard you weren't taking the Express," the man behind the wheel says.</p><p>"Figured Harry and I would give you a lift. Bit of bonding before I drop my only family," he sniffs. "Off at that wretched school."</p><p>"Sirius," Harry groans.</p><p>"Don't you 'Sirius' me, young man. I waited twelve years to meet you. I get to be pissed that we only had three weeks."</p><p>"Sirius?" she exclaims.</p><p>He shoots her a salute.</p><p>"Sirius Black, rascal, womanizer and parent horrify-er extraordinaire.  At your service."</p><p>"You're okay? I mean, you look good. But…"</p><p>Her student pamphlet said there would be 'extra security' at Hogwarts.</p><p>"What about Dementors?"</p><p>"Not looking for me. Not anymore. Well, not more than they're looking to be nasty to anything with a pulse. Broke out in September, and you and Harry got me my new trial by Boxing Day."</p><p>"You all right?" Harry asks, turning around in his seat.</p><p>"You were the one who got McGonagall to testify about forced de-transformation of an animagus. Also, Crookshanks got a medal."</p><p>He hands her a small box wrapped in silk.</p><p>"He did?"</p><p>"Order of Vyntalys."</p><p>"Haven't heard of it."</p><p>"Named after Morgana's dragon," Sirius explains. "She came closer than anyone to taming one. Given to non-human creatures that do services for the safety of Wizarding England. Horses that toss dark wizards off during escapes from crime scenes, dogs that bark at mermaids sneaking up for raids, so on. Not common for cat to get it, even an ozymandian tabby. Love that spooky ol' cat. Pulled half of Pettigrew's guts out when he bolted. Made catching him a lot easier. He was trying to get a supermarket teller to sell him a bowl to hold them in."</p><p>"You sure you're all right?" Harry asks. "You sent me I think eight owls in three days checking up on Sirius, and now it's all new to you."</p><p>"Yeah," she mumbles. "Just a lot of stuff to deal with."</p><p>"Well, take a nap," Harry suggests. "Sirius is working towards getting a permit. He takes his driving <em>seriously."</em></p><p>"I'm warning you, pup!"</p><p>Hermione can't help but laugh the first twenty minutes of the drive.<br/><br/></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Witches on Helicopters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Where we see the darkness that was...and might yet be.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hermione came out of stasis from the Time Turner accident in 2018, fifteen years after the last functional muggle government had fallen.  Since then, she has been fighting a scorched-earth campaign to ensure that Voldemort's empire dies, no matter how many have to die with it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Resistance Firebase Chernobog, Ural Mountains, Russia – December 2043, shortly before Hermione's capture in original timeline</strong>
</p><p>(T-minus: 30 minutes to Operation Phoenix, the final attempt of the direct assassination of the Riddle Family.)</p><p>(T-minus: 3 hours to Operation Flash Flood, the fallback plan to the sterilize of the Earth's surface to deny Voldemort access to food, slaves and resources.)</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>Hermione runs her hands across the gunship's fuselage, triggering the protective runes one at a time to check their integrity. The anti-puncture rune on the right engine is weak. She clicks her tongue and jerks her head at the rune. One of her enchanters scurries over with the specially-fueled blowtorch and touches it up.</p><p>She hasn't picked up much Russian, even after four years in country. Too busy getting shot at and losing the soldiers in protection details that she might learn it from. So she thanks the underfed boy with a clap on the shoulder and a quick squeeze.</p><p>She dances her fingers between the rivets on <em>Spirit of Hekate's</em> jet-black hull.</p><p>"Need your fangs one last time, girl."</p><p>Hermione coughs up a bit of pink slime. She brushes her hair off her sweaty forehead only to find a few strands came free in her hands. Too much time in hot labs ripping apart existing stockpiles and cobbling together larger and larger nuclear weapons, she supposes. Hopefully, the muggleborn children bunkered up aren't as sterile and cancer-ridden as she is. She'd worry about death from radiation sickness if there was the tiniest chance that she'll live to see tomorrow, or that her death wouldn't be in a nuclear fireball or a killing curse.</p><p>She squeeze her satellite phone's mic switch.</p><p>"Mongoose. Check in, all stations."</p><p>"Antlion, ready. London Underground is wired and we have tacticals in place at sites one, three, five, eight and twelve. Three-warhead redundancy. One point three megatons each. We burn in one hundred eighty five mikes. Volunteer teams staying behind to light fuses."</p><p>"Chicken Little, ready. We have birds just outside British airspace. Flight crew are keeping the muffling and invisibility charms running. The Romanov bombs are in the bays, safeties off. If we go down, two hundred megatons on point of impact."</p><p>"Kraken 1, ready. We are under the ice and our tubes are pressurized. Targets dialed in for UK, German, and US targets."</p><p>"Kraken 2, ready. Targets dialed in for all major population centers in China, India, Nigeria, and Argentina with targets of opportunity for all else. We'll wave at the penguins down here."</p><p>"Kraken 3, ready. Holding fire until confirmed detonations for one and two."</p><p>"Kraken 4, ready. Report same status as Kraken 3."</p><p>"Seed Vault Icebox, ready. Bunker doors sealed. Families are bunkered in, rations distributed. Primary, secondary and tertiary ventilation is on-line. Embryo freezers green."</p><p>"Seed Vault Tomb, ready. Reporting same as Icebox."</p><p>"Seed Vault Cradle, ready. Report same as Icebox. Volunteer breeders segregated and on triple rations."</p><p>"Seed Vault Eve, ready. Report same as Icebox. Defectors and inseminated surrogates are in individual pods. All medical staff and fertile magicals on triple rations and double-dosed on anti-radiations tablets."</p><p>Hermione turns off the phone while she tries to think of something—anything—she could possibly say.</p><p>"Antlion, your sacrifice will not be forgotten. Chicken Little, once you drop, break upwind and make for Icebox. All Krakens are to go deep, rad-tablet and conserve power while you make your way to Icebox for decon and assimilation. Mongoose, out."</p><p>She turns off her radio.</p><p>Assembling behind her is the crew of the firebase—what's left of it after a werewolf raid—mostly kids who studied in the slipshod remnants of the Russian witches' school. The oldest is maybe twenty five and has had a wand in hand and a cyanide capsule in a false tooth they were children. The muggle soldiers carry runed and cursed assault rifles which bubble and smoke while sickly orange light spills from the ends of the barrels.</p><p>Absolute demons, all of them. If she'd been here and she'd had this team after the Fall of Hogwarts in '99 the Death Eaters would've been done in a week, clearing the path to the real target.</p><p>If there's a miracle, Hermione herself will be dead by nightfall, along with her targets. If she fails to kill Voldemort, Bellatrix and their lunatic spawn, by this time next month, everyone at this base will be dead. Choked on fallout dust if a revenge strike doesn't get them first..</p><p>She's spent ten years apparition-blocking and warding deep-earth mineshafts and using curses to carve bunkers before stashing a large enough muggle gene pool and enough pregnant witches, fertile wizards and frozen embryos to give a chance to Humanity 2.0 when it emerges in a century and a half. Now she just has to give the order to destroy every living thing on the Earth's surface with atomic fire and poison.</p><p>"This is it, people. Bunker down, watch your ammo and focus fire on anything giving off normal body heat. No sense wasting shells on Inferi and they're damn near useless without a necro to guide them. Hold back the air-to-air for dragons."</p><p>Hermione slings herself into the gunner's seat. She waves her hand, waking up the muggle instruments and charging the arcanoscopes she keeps bolted on top to compensate for any illusion charms.</p><p>"Morning, Vasily."</p><p>"One last hunt?" he laughs.</p><p>"One last hunt, old friend. Let's go get those cackling bitches."</p><p>"Amen, little sister. Amen. Thanks for getting my family to a bunker. I know it cost you."</p><p>"Loyalty and love matter, Vasily. It's what separates us from them. Your daughter will know exactly what sort of a hero her father was."</p><p>
  <em>And what sort of monster he served under.</em>
</p><p>Vas slides the throttles forward and the helicopter's eighty-year-old airframe rattles as fifty-year-old engines retrofitted with her enhancements come to life. God bless Russian military thinking. Any gear that can't be repaired with a jackhammer and a chainsaw is too delicate. Ninety nine percent casualties acceptable long as the enemy takes one hundred.</p><p>"Wheels up. Ivan, Petra, Stay loose on my five and eight."</p><p>"Copy that, flight leader."</p><p>Hermione hangs the five-sided locket around the gun's joystick. She taps each picture once. Luna. Neville. Ginny. Ron. The blank spot for Harry.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Biting The Penitent's Pillow (1)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Where the pureblood's fear of muggleborns gets a bit of an explanation, and Hermione gets a warm, slippery, sticky welcome back.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've always been fascinated by the causes of hate in real-world history.  Why does this group hate that one?  </p><p>They <em>say</em> it's religion or wickedness but a few layers deeper?  It's money or it's pride.  Like how the Jewish religion's lack of a prohibition on usury (loaning money) meant that until the Protestant reformation Jewish people were the only money-lenders in Europe.  They were also involved in finance, and in many cases tax collection.  So if a medieval European was behind on a loan, they were behind on a loan <em>to a Jewish person</em> and twisting frustration into hate is quite easy.</p><p>So why <em>do</em> purebloods hate muggleborn?  What underlying anxiety, or jealousy, or loss of status coined the word 'mudblood'?</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dumbledore's speech in this timeline is better than in the Not-Hermione memories. No mention of Sirius Black the mass murderer, obviously. Instead, a nod to the 'revived' House of Black and the announcement that Sirius is Harry's guardian. She's surprised Harry asked for it to be mentioned during the feast but Merlin knows he's complained enough about bullying. The deterrence must be worth the snickering. Dumbledore gives an admonition to staff—whilst staring at Snape—that the newly-minted <em>Lord</em> Potter should be treated with all respect due an Ancient and Noble, as he is sure Snape gives Lord Malfoy or the Ladies Greengrass and Lady Parkinson.</p><p>Just as in Not-Hermione's memory, he welcomes Professor Lupin to the staff, and Hagrid of course. She's even closer to him than Not-Hermione was because she procures many of his creatures. The Black family, and by extension Narcissa, are the epicenter of the live markets, magical creature butchers, and slave-drivers of anything from house-elves to quarter-troll farm laborers to vampires, banshees and even imps, cambions and succubi. Not-Hermione was dead certain about house-elf freedom and she was right, as far as house-elves and true elves go, even if the Unseelie ones are as unpredictable and dangerous as lit dynamite if they're offended. Other part-human creatures are pleasant company collared, enchanted or runed but death by tooth and nail if running free.</p><p>When she and Narcissa toured last, they found a pen with four veela in it. She doesn't remember <em>why</em> she felt sorry for them but she paid their price, blew the lock off the cage with her wand and tattooed the procurer's bald head with a rune that would warn anything with feathers if he came within a mile of it. He pled with Narcissa but she just fixed her dark blue eyes on an imaginary defect in her nails and paid him fifty galleons to shut up and find other work. Veela were important to her, and she can't bear their suffering. Or are important. Or will be important someday. The more she thinks about Delphini, the less sure Hermione is that time even exists.</p><p>Near the end of his speech, Dumbledore warns the students that Bellatrix Lestrange has escaped Azkaban and that six auror teams will be patrolling the outer wards with permission to stun--or worse--anyone trying to sneak in.</p><p>Delphini's mum has escaped Azkaban, probably because Delphini is mucking around trying to make sure she is born so she can fast-forward herself and join Hermione. Except that means <em>Voldemort</em> needs to be alive too--unless evil shades not even as dense as ghosts can knock a woman up--and that's not a pleasant thought. It's not that she doubts Delphini's abilities, because her--friend? girlfriend? tragic lover?--already has killed a much more powerful version of Voldemort and sent herself back in time to study with every master wizard and witch through human history.</p><p>It's not what happens in the nine months while Bellatrix is pregnant that scares her. It's Delphini getting caught. Worse, getting hurt.</p><p>Dumbledore claps his hands and food appears. Daphne Greengrass slips onto the bench next to her, reaching for toast and jam. Hermione flicks her fingers to create a wandless barrier.</p><p>"Actual food."</p><p>"I'll get fat," Daphne huffs.</p><p>"You look amazing," Hermione assures her with a forkful of duck halfway to her lips. "Only places you're getting plump is where people want plump," she jokes, glancing down at Daphne's chest.</p><p>"Flattery won't get you far."</p><p>"I only need it to get me between your legs," Hermione whispers.</p><p>Daph's creamy skin blushes scarlet.</p><p>"It'll get you there."</p><p>"Good girl."</p><p>Daphne shivers.</p><p>"I need to tell the Headmaster something, so tell the house I won't be down right off."</p><p>"You're making us wait?" Daphne whines. "It's the Herald's party. You have to be there."</p><p>"I'll be fashionably late. I'm sure everyone can find something to suck on before I get there."</p><p>-----</p><p>When she strides over to the Gryffindor table and taps Harry on the shoulder, Ron grinds his teeth and Ginny swats him with a dinner roll before waving hello with the same hand and the now-crushed roll.</p><p>"Harry?"</p><p>He turns in his seat.</p><p>"Yeah?"</p><p>"Can you and Neville meet me by the staff table? Something we need to tell the Headmaster. It's about the Snow-Globe-Without-Snow."</p><p>Harry pales.</p><p>"Absolutely."</p><p>Hermione inhales, exhales and repeats. This will either go brilliantly or terribly and there's really no middle. She waits for Harry to coax Neville to join them, straightens her back and marches straight towards the staff table.</p><p>"Yes, Miss Granger?"</p><p>"Sir, we need to talk. It's about the prophecy."</p><p>Dumbledore nods to Snape and McGonagall and gestures to a side hallway.</p><p>Ten minutes later, Dumbledore has his glasses off and is rubbing his temples like it'll push the headache back in. Neville is sitting statue-still like he worries he'll break something expensive if he moves. Snape is just staring at her and McGonagall is pretending to have a cold so that she can cover her mouth to hide her shock.</p><p>"How did you come into possession of this prophecy?"</p><p>"The globe was owled to me. And it was labeled H. Potter so I brought it to Harry."</p><p>"Is that true?"</p><p>"Yes, sir. Hermione has been very helpful to me since my second week here."</p><p>He hums, seemingly unconvinced. Maybe he thinks that he's immunized his sacrificial lamb from trusting a Slytherin. Maybe he can't see past the green tie around her neck to the idea that there might be more than one reason to stop Voldemort.</p><p>"So a prophecy globe from one of the most secure parts of the Ministry was sent to you by regular owl post?"</p><p>"Yes, sir. It seems we have a secret ally."</p><p>"You said there was something else, Miss Granger?"</p><p>"Yes. Well, this bit I would like to be alone with you for," she admits. "Because it's a bit embarrassing and not really about Harry or Neville."</p><p>"Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape, if you could please lea-"</p><p>"Snape can stay," she blurts out. "Excuse me. Professor Snape."</p><p>Never a man to use a sentence when he can arch an eyebrow, Snape sits back in his chair. McGonagall ushers the Gryffindors out, and Harry throws a worried look over her shoulder.</p><p>"Bellatrix Lestrange was released from Azkaban so she can bear Voldemort's child, and we must not interfere until the child is born," Hermione exclaims in a too-loud rush.</p><p>"Hekate's ass, woman! Are you insane?" Snape snarls.</p><p>"My ally is Voldemort's daughter, sir. In another timeline, Professor McGonagall had given me a time turner so I could take extra classes. The reason Sirius Black is alive is that when he was about to be kissed, Harry and I used it to go back in time and saved him. We failed. Harry aged rapidly while I stayed stuck in the vortex for twenty-four years. When I emerged, every muggle nation had already bent the knee and Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, Luna Lovegood were leading what was left. Since I had 'come back from the dead' they put me in charge. Eventually, I caught the attention of Voldemort's daughter. Her name is Delphini Riddle."</p><p>"Apparently, in the future she is from, I led the fight against Voldemort to the bitter end. She was impressed by me. Well, future me. And..."</p><p>Hermione scrunches her eyes shut.</p><p>"She fancied future me. She killed her father and then went back in time to meet me the night I failed to use the time turner properly. She did it right, so Harry didn't die. And then this morning I woke up on a muggle train headed to Banff. I could feel my memories splitting into two branches. What was true before I met her and what is true after.  True now. She's moved back and forth in history so much she doesn't need a time turner, just a few drops of her own blood. She's watching from the future, waiting for her birth in our time so she can replace her infant self."</p><p>"If you have a pensive, I can provide memories. Lady Malfoy taught me the spell for it. Or veritaserum."</p><p>"Another time, but yes. Proof would be nice. Why in the name of Merlin's did we give you a time turner, young lady? A third-year! And given by McGonagall, not your head of house?"</p><p>Hermione blushes.</p><p>"Because in that timeline, you were rather lax on safety. The basilisk incident wasn't the first time a deadly creature attacked. In my first year, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was Quirrell. He was possessed by Voldemort. He drank unicorn blood and nearly killed Harry and Malfoy when they were serving detention in the forbidden forest."</p><p>"WHERE?" Snape hollers.</p><p>"Albus, why on Earth would you forced students to patrol the forest for detention?"</p><p>He shakes his head.</p><p>"I believe Miss Granger is our tutor tonight. Perhaps she can enlighten us."</p><p>"On Halloween, he let a troll into the girl's loo to try to steal the Philosopher's Stone, which you had moved from Gringotts to here for some reason. Nearly killed me. Your response was to give Harry fifty points for defeating the troll and dock me ten for putting myself at risk. That time, the Chamber of Secrets incident incapacitated three muggleborn children, myself included, and by the time Harry killed it, they had replaced you as Headmaster and Ginny Weasley was nearly mad from the diary's influence."</p><p>"Gods," Dumbledore whispers. "It's unsettling, hearing about this version of myself."</p><p>"Rather than just roughhousing and pranking, Harry and Malfoy were practically mortal enemies because Malfoy made fun of me on the way into the feast. The hat placed me first, and Harry asked the hat to put himself in Gryffindor to protect me. I was a Gryffindor."</p><p>Snape scoffs.</p><p>"The Herald of the Dragon placed in Gryffindor? Preposterous."</p><p>"I wasn't the Herald there, Professor. I was just Hermione Granger, muggleborn witch who everyone in Slytherin called mudblood."</p><p>Snape flinches at the term. She vividly remembers his tirade the first time someone called her that, and he banned the word on pain of docking a hundred points per incident.  When he punished them for the second incident, his speech left Crabbe, Goyle, Bulstrode and Zabini in tears, Parkinson staining her robes and Malfoy choking on the word, like he'd rather suffocate than get past the 'u' in 'mud' and she shudders to think what the third would have looked like.</p><p>"I'm not exactly sure what being Herald even means. When my memories shifted, I remembered Narcissa Malfoy fostering me with my parents' permission. Several former Death Eaters did a ritual to place some sort of mark on me that says they cannot harm me. Probably so they treat me like a member of their inner circle despite me being a muggleborn."</p><p>"The first time someone called me Herald was right after a flock of crows brought me these."</p><p>Hermione lifts the necklace off her neck and pulls out the signet ring. Inside the face are three paper thin discs of some sort of crystal that can be swapped out, so that the owner doesn't need a ring on each finger.</p><p>"With your permission, headmaster, I'd like to perform..." She gulps. "Blood magic."</p><p>"Oh?" Dumbledore chortles, drumming his fingers on the desk.</p><p>His hand is a finger's breadth from the Elder Wand. If he thinks she's a threat, it's over. They don't know that her school wand is not her real wand and Delphini's wand is holstered in her sleeve. That would give her the edge in power, no question but this is a tight space and she wouldn't be willing to hurt them which would mean she would lose.</p><p>"Well, a proof of line scrying <em>is</em> blood magic, isn't it? Wandless magic cast by moving and enchanting human blood? It's just messier than an Unbreakable Vow or a line proof rune.  Just as a flesh-knitter charm is healing performed by exchanging magically charged blood? Lord Malfoy has been generous in letting me study less traditional magic over the summer breaks. But I do not cast those at Hogwarts, I promise."</p><p>"Proceed."</p><p>Hermione pulls a dragon-forged dagger from her robes and pricks a spot on the outside of her wrist, squeezing until a drop of blood forms. Closing her eyes, she whispers the incantation and directs one drop into one of the rings, then repeats the process.</p><p>"I, Hermione Jean Granger, do declare myself of noble blood. Show the truth of my rights in this moment and strike me down should I lie..."</p><p>The discs rise on end and spin across the desktop like coins, glowing with a sickly green light. A hissing voice from nowhere answers Hermione's question.</p><p>"She is Lady Le Fay by trial of drowning in the Black Spring of Land-Under-Avalon."</p><p>"She is Lady Sanguini, by bloodshed and moonlight shared."</p><p>"She is Lady Whitefang, by alliance in battle."</p><p>"She will be Lady Slytherin by betrothal sealed and sworn."</p><p>"She will be Lady Lestrange by conquest to come, seer-proven."</p><p>Hermione scoops the discs back up and slots them back into the ring's clockwork.</p><p>"I helped Lord Malfoy and Lord Greengrass put down a werewolf-vampire skirmish summer. Combat of champions. The lords had me fight both champions and I beat both. Summer of the second year. Before I attended, Lady Malfoy took me to Under-Avalon to test me. Lestrange is because someday, I will have to duel Bellatrix and I will kill her and Slytherin is because Delphini Riddle wants to marry me and she's the last."</p><p>"Two of these are decades in the future," Snape scoffs.</p><p>"Precisely. Not in the blood, and scattered across the present and the future but the Spirit of Magic sees them as valid in the presence of a pureblood and a half-blood witness," Dumbledore muses. "Remarkable."</p><p>"Indeed," Snape drawls. "It's as if someone was trying to...build...a dark princess and forged the perfect signet ring for it."</p><p>Hermione sniffs.</p><p>"Sir, <em>please</em>. I want Voldemort dead as much as you. Maybe more. For me, it's personal. He hurt someone. Someone that I'm falling in love with."</p><p>"Let me help you save Harry, Headmaster. When Delphini arrives, let me train with her. We can make Harry ready to <em>win</em> the duel he's destined to fight."</p><p>She turns to Snape.</p><p>"We can make Lily Evans proud of Harry, and proud of us for not wasting her sacrifice."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><h2> <a href="https://rb.gy/b1fjhr">Want to see the posh stuff?  Want to see future chapters early?</a>
</h2>
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